By Andrei Codrescu
I am declaring 2005 the Year of Fantasy. In the Y.F. the dollar will become convertible into Imaginary Dollars (I.D.s). Its been clear for some time that imagination is the real currency in a world that loses 600 Imagination Units (I.U.s) per person every year, because of Imagination-Sucking-Time-Consuming-Media-Generated-Distractions (I.S.T.C.M.G.D.s). In this kind of world, anybody with a good performing imagination can be rich.

This is no longer an opinion. An Australian gamer known as Deathifier paid $26,500 current dollars to buy a virtual island at an online auction. The island exists only within Project Entropia, a computer role-playing game (R.P.G.) played by thousands of players. Entropia allows gamers to buy and sell virtual items using real cash. Virtual items selling for cash on eBay have been around for a while, but Entropia is the beginning of a new economic order based on the imagination. The Entropia economy lets gamers exchange real currency into P.E.D. (Project Entropia Dollars) and back again into real money. Ten P.E.D.s are the equivalent to one U.S. dollar and typical items sold include iron ingots ($5) and shogun armor ($1.70).

According to the BBC, massively multi-player online role-playing games (M.M.O.R.P.G.s) have a yearly gross economic impact equivalent to the G.D.P. of the African nation of Namibia. Although Entropia comes with a gigantic abandoned castle, Marco Behrmann of Mindmark, developer of Entropia, is planning to sell other properties for people who wish to build their own virtual homes there. Hunting and mining rights are negotiable.

There is no doubt that living out alternate lives in fantasy worlds will be the way of the future. As real land becomes scarce and the cost of medical care soars and Social Security vanishes, the baby boomers will be colonizing cyberspace from their wheelchairs as far as their imaginations can reach.

My advice for 2005 is: turn off all the I.S.T.C.M.G.D.s and start saving I.U.s. Its hard to start from scratch, after years of being wrung dry by the Entertainment Complex (E.C.), but there are exercises for atrophied dreaming and fantasizing muscles (D.F.M.s): poetry, dance, art, spontaneous games (S.G.s). There is also the New Orleans School for the Imagination (NOSI), where virtuality is a pigeons heartbeat away from the Grail. To wit, if youre not yet invested in an M.M.O.R.P.G., apply to NOSI and trade in your U.S. dollars for I.U.s at NOSI this Y.F.